Piher
Maceda
Field
Research Assistant
Andes to
Amazon Biodiversity Program
Piher Maceda is one of
the best field botanists working in the Peruvian Amazon, especially in his
native region of Madre de
Dios, Peru. He was born and raised in the
jungle town of Puerto
Maldonado and at an early age, with his father and
uncles, he began exploring the rainforests of the region. As a teenager Piher
became a successful fisherman, a skill that he has continued to this day in the
Madre de Dios
River basin. His fishing
activities took him up many of the river systems of the region. In the late
1990's Piher started working with Fernando
Cornejo, an accomplished Peruvian botanist who now works as a
BRIT Research Botanist. His first job at that time was as a field research
assistant on the famous Brazil Nut Project operated and managed by the Amazon
Conservation Association in Madre de
Dios, Peru. And in 2002 Piher started
working with Janovec and Cornejo on the Los Amigos Botany Project of BRIT, which
aims to document the diverse flora of the Los Amigos
River watershed of Madre de Dios. Because of his native knowledge of the
forests and the flora of the region, he quickly learned scientific names of all
the families and genera of the region. And Piher now serves as one of the most
important resources of botanical knowledge working on the BRIT project in
Peru. Janovec and the rest of the
team are always amazed by Piher's ability to not only recognize and collect the
plants, but remember almost every plant that he collects and the exact locations
where the collections are made – almost as if he has a built-in GPS and computer
database in his brain! He has collected at least two plant species new to
science, including a Malpighiaceae species being named for him by Dr. Bill
Anderson of the University of Michigan, and a species of the genus
Calatola in the Icacinaceae family. In the last couple of years Piher has made
nearly 4000 collections of plants from the Los Amigos
River watershed and he has
generated at least double that number in digital images of the species that he
collects. Piher works close with Janovec to lead botanical field work and
expeditions in the region, including the inventory of forest diversity transects
being carried out by the BRIT field team.